Basement Wine
For a while, when I was a kid, we lived with my uncle John—my father's brother. The lady who lived next door to him was not a small person, and every time she washed her bras and panties she would dry them on the hedges in front of her house. It looked like she was dressing up the bushes in her undergarments.
This lady—her name was Shirley—also made her own wine in garbage cans in the basement. She used to sell some to my mother and other people in the neighbourhood, but most of it she drank herself. Every time I saw this woman, she was literally falling-down drunk. She had no equilibrium. My mom is getting that way now, and it's not fun to watch.
The neighbour across the street from Shirley was an old woman who found the show of bras and panties to be positively dis
